By the time this column is published, the much prepared for, long awaited solar eclipse will be history. Most who traveled distances to share the moons total blockage of the sun will either be home or well on their way to sleeping in their own beds. Folks living in the path of totality will be cleaning up after their guests and evaluating the success of their preparations for the big event. Some will simply enjoy returning to a sense of normalcy.

Many communities in the 14 state path of totality, meaning the moon completely obscures the sun, have spent the past two years planning for an influx of visitors who will require food and shelter as well as specialty eye glasses to protect their vision while gazing at this astronomical extravaganza. Shrewd business people have relished a marketing opportunity never seen before in their lives. Lodging sites and restaurants have advertised their services for the past 12 months. Despite increased rates, many are booked with waiting lists. Creative types are selling specialty t-shirts, jewelry, funny photos (the Marysville Black Squirrel in eclipse glasses), and other ephemera to local and tourists who join their celebrations.

Though the song says, “Dance like no one is watching,” this historic occasion is a time to move like everyone is watching. In some cases, that will be true. Many media outlets, including National Geographic, plan to film the actual eclipse as well as local activities that include everything from kid karnivals to car shows to concerts. For some tiny towns, this is a chance to focus the eyeball of the world on what makes them special.

This unique opportunity offers professional and citizen scientists a chance to study everything from cosmic data to animal responses to the eclipse. One meteorologist in Colorado provided a link so those interested could share their observations.

Speaking of observing, one friend headed to Oregon where she’d be one of the first to view the eclipse on American soil. Several others intend to double their pleasure while savoring more than two minutes of Totality near Grand Teton National Park. They sandwiched this once in a lifetime experience between stunning sunrises over some of the most majestic mountains on the planet.

Another lady told me she was heading to Marysville, KS, where she’ll enjoy a shorter sun blockage but with the famous black squirrels. A fellow history buff is aligning past and present by viewing the eclipse from an ancient Pawnee campground in Nebraska. What a way to embrace two interesting experiences.

As for me, I now live smack in the path of totality. I’ve got my eclipse glasses along with extra water and toilet paper, just in case tourist numbers exceed expectations. It’s crazy to think so many people are willing to plan vacations around an eclipse, but then again, it’ll never occur again in our lifetimes.

I’ll enjoy nature’s big production. When it’s over, I’ll relish life returning to normal—whatever that is.

Native Kansan Karen Madorin is a local writer and retired teacher who loves sharing stories about places, people, critters, plants, food, and history of the High Plains.

Remember when you moved out of your college apartment, and probably because your mother told you to, you vacuumed one last time and checked to make sure nothing was spoiling in the refrigerator?

Gov. Sam Brownback did the equivalent of that final cleanup last week when he told Secretary of Corrections Joe Norwood to start the paperwork to give raises of 10 percent to correctional officers at El Dorado Correctional Facility, the state’s biggest prison…and, oh yes, 5 percent to uniformed correctional officers at the state’s other prisons.

Those raises, which are aimed at boosting employment at El Dorado where there were some relatively moderate convict uprisings last month and throwing a bone to the officers at other facilities, will cost a few million dollars, and he agreed with leaders of the House and Senate that the budget touch-ups that will be required to balance the Corrections budget will be taken care of next session.

That averted a special session of the Legislature, which leaders feared, to deal with the prison salary issue this fall, and also was probably the most solid indication that Brownback is quietly waiting for his confirmation to a State Department post dealing with international religious freedom and protection to which he has been appointed by President Donald Trump.

And, Brownback’s raise proposition, while less than many had wanted for prison workers, also essentially indicates that there’s apparently no not-yet-visible special provision that Brownback wants considered on his way out of office. Back in 2014, Brownback called a special session to deal with a flaw in the state’s Hard 50 sentencing statute but was likely more interested in Senate confirmation of his former legal counsel Caleb Stegall to the Kansas Court of Appeals under a new constitutional amendment passed in 2014.

That prison raise approved by the governor essentially means that Brownback is doing housekeeping on his way out, and trusts the Legislature to get into the scrap over those prison salaries next session when he will presumably read about the issue in the newspaper at his Washington, D.C., office.

Might note that the governor wasn’t interested in taking a leadership role on a bigger dollar issue last year, when it was learned just after the election that the newly elected Legislature faced millions of dollars of shortfall in last fiscal year, and instead of using his authority to cut spending, handed the tough decisions off to the lawmakers to wrestle with in this year’s session.

The prison raises authorized by Brownback aren’t likely to solve the problem of crowded prisons, of staff turnover that neared 50 percent in the last fiscal year at El Dorado and averaged 33 percent in the entire eight-facility corrections system. The lower raises at the other seven institutions will be an issue when the Legislature reconvenes, and the raise issue will undoubtedly spread to other state employees, many of whom got their first 2.5 percent raise this year after nearly a decade of frozen salaries.

The prison raises will become a catalyst for state employee pay consideration, which is a bigger issue in cities with high numbers of state workers than across the prairie, and which will also be compared to pay for schoolteachers, who are likely to receive raises this year due to increased state spending on K-12. No telling whether the Kansas Supreme Court will determine that the increased spending on public schools meets the constitutional “adequacy” requirement, but some districts have decided to take what is in their budgets and spend it on raises for schoolteachers.

Practically, Brownback damped the prison pay issue, or at least reduced its heat, and set an example that Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, who ascends to the governorship when Brownback is confirmed for the Trump appointment, is going to have to deal with for the final year of the gubernatorial term and in preparation for his race for governor…

Syndicated by Hawver News Company LLC of Topeka; Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report—to learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit the website at www.hawvernews.com

Call it a problem, or call it an inconvenience, but a challenge for all of us hunters, fishermen and trappers who don’t live in the country or who don’t own land is finding a place to unload carcasses and those “parts and pieces” remaining after cleaning fish and game.

A friend recently told me they discovered someone had cleaned a mess of frogs and deposited the remains on the back corner of their property (and NO it wasn’t me!) Anyway, that reminded me of an “incident” some years back, and since this “incident” took place in the winter, maybe reading this will make you think “cool” thoughts. So grab an ice cream sandwich or a Klondike bar and enjoy reading “Jake and the Bone Pile.”

My sister had an old dog named Jake, a stray as I remember it. Jake was old and a little crippled and was kind of the color of light brown gravy. Jake often seemed dumber than a bag of hammers, but he knew no strangers. He was big and stocky and when his tail got to waggin’ his whole back end wagged.

His back half would fling from side-to-side so violently I often expected something from back there to come loose and fly across the yard! He always greeted visitors with something in his mouth, wanting to play fetch; trouble was, that “something” was always a 2×4 or a tree limb about 4 feet long, and once his body got to waggin’ with his chosen tree limb or 2×4 in his mouth, he could easily take you out with a whack across the legs. Ole’ Jake’s obsession took him far and wide over the farm to find just the right object to carry around in his position as head greeter on their farm.

Every livestock farm raising chickens, turkeys, hogs, sheep or cattle, like it or not has occasional casualties from sickness or cold weather. And every livestock farm has a “bone pile,” a spot somewhere in the “back 40” where carcasses can be dumped in a ravine or a briar patch as a way to discreetly dispose of them while Mother Nature and the coyotes compost them. The first year I trapped beavers here in Kansas, I learned to take advantage of the bone pile on my sister’s farm as a convenient way to dispose of beaver carcasses after I had removed their pelts. I had traps nearby, so every time I caught a beaver I’d just carry the carcass with me the following morning and deposit it on the pile when I was in the neighborhood; very convenient for me.

One particularly cold morning I got a call from my sister; she sounded a little miffed, but I could tell she was on the verge of laughter even as we spoke. It seems she looked out into the yard this cold frozen morning to find Jake playing with his usual large prize, but something looked odd about that day’s trophy, so curiosity sent her into the yard to see just what he had found this time. As she approached, Jake’s back end began to wag feverishly, thinking someone was coming to play fetch with him and his prize, and he spun around joyfully and greeted her with a frozen beaver carcass from the bone pile clenched proudly in his big yap!

Yup, dogs are the epitome of unconditional love and acceptance. One minute they can seem dumber than a box of rocks, the next minute they curl up beside you in your old recliner and become your most loyal friend, despite the names you have just called them for performing certain hygiene functions in the middle of the dining room. Mutts, you gotta; love em’! Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors!

Steve Gilliland, Inman, can be contacted by email at [email protected].

When the President announced a reversal of policy, preventing transgender individuals from serving in the military, a major reason given was the medical cost. But why would individuals of military age still be receiving transition surgery? This question never arose. That silence speaks loudly to our nationwide ignorance of transgender biology, and to the fact that some in our medical community persist in putting off the decision to transition, encouraging patients to wait until they are “more mature.”

In our society, most citizens still do not know the difference between gender and sexuality. They confuse transsexuals with lesbian and gay individuals because it is the last letter in the LGBT acronym. Being born with a gender identity that does not agree with your anatomy has nothing to do with sexuality.

“Sex” was the only term we used before the 1950s. But it did not explain the variations in behavior and anatomy. Not all male homosexuals were effeminate nor were all lesbians masculine.

Dr. John Money at the Psychohormonal Unit at Johns Hopkins University was the person who borrowed the term “gender” from its usage in language and applied it to the masculine-to-feminine spectrum. His unit was a center for helping parents decide what to do with babies who were born with ambiguous genitalia. Johns Hopkins was the center for conducting the transition surgery for some of the first pioneer sports figures who switched between male and female in the 1950s and 1960s.

Money documented cases where children by age five or six expressed a profound and definite conviction that “I am not a boy; I want to be a girl like my sister is…” despite normal male anatomy. Money’s experiences resulted in a pioneer book with colleague Anke Ehrhardt: “Man and Woman, Boy and Girl” where the sequence of development and differentiation was carefully explained.

The presence of genes on the Y-chromosome (usually) causes the development of fetal testes that provide fetal hormones that (usually) drive the development of fetal male anatomy and affect the brain. A young boy (usually) develops a male body image and (usually) responds as a masculine boy in response to other’s behavior. At puberty, the male anatomy (usually) develops along with masculine behavior and normal male eroticism (sexual attraction to females). The absence of a Y-chromosome (usually) results in the cascade of female anatomy, hormones, femininity and female eroticism. These many cases of “usually” reflect the many exceptions that Money saw at his unit for diagnosis and treatment. I used Money’s book in high school biology starting in 1975. Students left class thankful they were normal.

However, when Money was diagnosed with rapid onset Parkinsons, he remained uncertain if the feeling of masculinity or femininity developed in the first years of childhood or in the last trimester of fetal development during pregnancy. That issue soon became settled by brain anatomy research by Dick Swaab and his associates in the Netherlands: gender identity develops before birth.

Dr. Money died in 2006 and I was one of a few invited to his memorial service. Johns Hopkins Hospital was not represented because they had abandoned this work. The new psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Paul R. McHugh considered transgenderism to be a “mental disorder” that needed treatment and considered sex change to be “biologically impossible.” McHugh has now retired. And Johns Hopkins Hospital is returning to sex reassignment surgery.

But the practice of delaying puberty through the age of 18 or 21 by using puberty blocker drugs so a child can be “really certain” continues. It ignores the extensive successful surgeries done when there is solid and strong indication of gender by age of five or six. Hormone therapy and surgery conducted after a person has finished growing do not provide as satisfactory an outcome.

Awaiting adulthood to conduct transition hormones and surgery contradicts the biological need to use hormones and surgery as soon as possible. Treated earlier, trans individuals would enter the armed forces as men or women—no more surgery needed.

To understand these youngsters’ dilemma, the PBS documentary “Frontline: Growing Up Trans” is available from PBS.

This recent controversy did reveal that our armed forces spend far more on Viagra for the troops than they spend for belated transition surgery. If you had your windows open when that hit the news, you could probably hear 150 million women across America scream: “What?!?”

By BOB GARDNER
National Federation of State High School Associations
and GARY MUSSELMAN
Kansas State High School Activities Association

Tailgates. Pep rallies. Friday night lights. The new school year is here! And that’s exciting news for student-athletes and high school sports fans alike.

Research shows that being a student-athlete is about a lot more than fun and games. It teaches important life lessons, too. In fact, high school athletes not only have higher grade point averages and fewer school absences than non-athletes, they also develop the kind of work habits and self-discipline that helps them become more responsible and productive community members.

Attending high school sporting events teaches important life lessons, too.

Among them, it teaches that we can live in different communities, come from different backgrounds, faiths and cultures, cheer for different teams, and still have a common bond.

That’s why attending the activities hosted by your community’s high school this fall is so important. It’s not only an opportunity to cheer for your hometown team, it is also an opportunity to celebrate our sense of community, and that’s something our country needs right now.

The bond we share is mutually supporting the teenagers in our respective communities. We applaud their persistence, tenacity, preparation and hard work, regardless of the color uniform they wear. We acknowledge education-based, high school sports are enhancing their lives, and ours, in ways that few other activities could. And we agree that, regardless of what side of the field we sit on, attending a high school sporting event is an uplifting, enriching, family-friendly experience for all of us.

Many of the high schools in our state lie at the heart of the communities they serve. They not only are educating our next generation of leaders, they also are a place where we congregate, where people from every corner of town and all walks of life come together as one. At no time is this unity more evident than during a high school athletic event.

This is the beginning of a new school year. Opportunities abound both in and outside of the classroom. Let’s make the most of them by attending as many athletic events at the high school in our community as possible.
Turn on the lights, and let the games begin!

Bob Gardner is Executive Director of the National Federation of State High School Associations, and Gary Musselman is Executive Director of the Kansas State High School Activities Association.

Remember, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me?” It isn’t so.

Words, the stock in trade of politics and public policy, express value with as much volatility and meaning as any commodity, stock or bond. Words can be used subtly in ways that let us find meanings in the deeds and thoughts of people across time from many cultures and environments.

Words can provide beauty, wit and incisive observations that cut through the verbal fog others use to restate reality (alternative facts). When scammers and confidence men use such words and blend them with conscienceless lying, the resources of the trusting, the gullible and the greedy are easily looted. Words can brutally condemn, incite, insult and, yes, as the fields of psychology and psychiatry have proven, do grievous injury to the mind and the body.

At the moment, we are experiencing new and confusing usages that have the whole nation and perhaps the world totally confounded. On the world stage, we have tin-pot tyrants across the globe who manipulate language in ways that would make George Orwell gasp.

Here we have a six-month-old presidential administration led by one of the world’s most confounding users of language. We all “hear” what President Trump tweets and says, but apparently his words should never be taken at face value or accepted as statements of truth and intent. Whatever the announcement is, it has to be re-interpreted, defended and modified by his inner circle of explainers. Now, in just this week, we finally know that his first utterance is always his truest, and almost universally dangerous, destructive, ill-informed and morally wrong.

Kansans have not been isolated or exempted from these broad trends in unhelpful communication. First, we have the Big Lie syndrome. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach currently stands as the most skillful practitioner of this technique. His unfounded, unsubstantiated claims of extensive voter fraud that support changes in laws and regulations to make voting more difficult and alienating have been conclusively and consistently debunked. Yet these claims remain the stock in trade of Mr. Kobach, who redoubles his efforts by repeating the claims and adding personal attacks on the motives and values of the people who dare disagree.

The “Use of Fluff and Folderol” prize has to go to our reportedly departing incumbent Governor Sam Brownback. He made unfounded promises of economic sunshine and progress for all Kansans to gain legislative approval of enormous tax reductions. All criticism was rejected but never refuted with any evidence. The clear failure of the “real-life experiment” was never admitted. His words in defense have always accused others or deflected blame towards outside, uncontrollable variables such as commodity prices, low oil prices, and drought. Never did he claim any personal responsibility for the failure that everyone else could see.

Finally, we have the flipside of words to deceive, confuse and deny truth. Our Senator Pat Roberts manifests an unwillingness to communicate at all. Doubtless he absorbed reports of the oppositional public meeting experience Senator Moran had in Palco concerning repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Senator Roberts chose to ignore the majority of his constituents during the “repeal or repeal and replace” votes in the U.S. Senate earlier this month. When he returned to Kansas for the summer recess, he simply made no plans to publicly converse with his run-of-the-mill constituents.

Of what value are words when they come from voices and minds that are not inclined to truth, deliberation, and debate?

Dr. Mark Peterson teaches political science at the college level in Topeka.

By RON WILSON
Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development

The book was on the New York Times bestseller list for 52 weeks. In the acknowledgements section of the best-selling sequel to this book, the author expressed his thanks to several people – including a woman veterinarian from rural Kansas.

Dr. Deb Mangelsdorf is the veterinarian who is credited in this remarkable book by W. Bruce Cameron. The book is titled A Dog’s Journey.

Deb Mangelsdorf grew up in Prairie Village where her father, a K-State alum, worked in the seed business. “I always wanted to be a veterinarian,” she said.

Deb went to Shawnee Mission East High School. Among her classmates was W. Bruce Cameron who was born in Michigan and then moved to the Kansas City area. “He was the class clown,” Deb said. “I tutored him in math.”

Deb came to K-State to get her doctor of veterinary medicine degree. Bruce Cameron went to college in Missouri and pursued a writing career. He became a humor columnist for a Denver newspaper and published several books, including 8 Simple Tips for Dating My Teenage Daughter. He subsequently moved to California.

After earning her DVM, Deb stayed in Manhattan and founded the Konza Veterinary Clinic which has grown to include eight employees and serves customers throughout the region. She now lives in Ashland Bottoms, a rural area south of Manhattan. Ashland Township has a population of 139 people. Now, that’s rural.

The veterinarian had lost touch with Cameron, her old high school classmate, until a class reunion provided updated contact information. She then exchanged emails with him. When he learned she had become a veterinarian, he got excited. “I’m writing a book about a dog,” he said. He wanted her input.

From time to time, he contacted her to discuss the elements of his book, and to see if the animal behaviors which he described made sense. The book itself is written from a dog’s perspective about human relationships and behavior. In Cameron’s fanciful novel, one particular dog is reborn over and over again as a different breed of dog each time, but the dog’s role is always to help people. It is a touching book.

The book was titled A Dog’s Purpose. It follows this dog through several lives and a relationship with a particular family. Published in 2010, the book was a major success with 52 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. In 2017, it became a movie starring Dennis Quaid. Most of the dogs in the movie were rescue dogs. Part of the proceeds went for humane rescues.

A Dog’s Purpose was followed in 2012 by A Dog’s Journey which became an instant New York Times bestseller. In the acknowledgements, Cameron thanks Deb Mangelsdorf for her “wise advice about dogs and veterinary medicine.”

“I appreciate what the book says about our relationship with animals,” Deb said. “When the movie came out, we took our entire staff to see it.”

The movie and the books provide a fascinating and engaging look at how dogs relate to people and how they might see human behaviors. Deb has observed that dogs seem to have a sense of what is happening in their owner’s lives at some level. Some dogs can tell if their human owner is experiencing stress or joy, for example.

“We don’t know what our pets know, but they know something,” she said, adding that she has closely observed the benefits of the human-animal bond. “I’ve seen it so many times.”

The books and the movie handle sensitive issues realistically. “Sometimes euthanasia is the kindest thing to do,” Deb said. Of W. Bruce Cameron, she added, “He has a lot of talent, and he has a lot of compassion too.”

More information about Konza Vet Clinic can be found on Facebook. For more information about the books, go to www.brucecameron.com.

The New York Times bestseller list included a book with a reference to a woman veterinarian from rural Kansas. We commend Dr. Deb Mangelsdorf for making a difference with her care for animals, and for helping develop this remarkable story. It helps show the purpose in a dog’s life.

Let them march in Charlottesville. Let them speak.

Hate-propagating neo-Nazis and bottom-dwelling white supremacists — the dregs of our open society — have and should have First Amendment rights to speak and march in public.

We need to see them for what they are: a disappointing collection of the disaffected; some parading around in silly costumes, often ignorant of the real meaning and history of the symbols they display, carrying torches meant as much to intimidate as to illuminate.

We need to hear them for what they say: advocacy of discredited ideas involving racial purity and intolerance, couched in misrepresentations of U.S. history and the American experience.

We need to understand them for what they are: betrayers of what President Lincoln called “our better angels,” of the principles of equality, justice and the rule of law — painfully worked out over time and sometimes imperfectly at the outset, through the self-correcting processes of speaking and writing freely, of assembling and petitioning peaceably for change.

Granted, it is tempting after events like those of last weekend to take another view. While there is only a small fraction of our fellow citizens who hold such repellent views on white supremacy and racial hatred, there is the very real danger that a few more, and then a few more than that, will be seduced by false pretentions and misleading presentations of patriotism, economic security and personal safety.

History tells us of the rise at various times in our nation of groups preaching hate and bigotry and violence, using their rights of speech, press and assembly to inflame rather than inform, incite rather than inspire, and indoctrinate rather than educate. Nativists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and others at various times have used fear, prejudice and ignorance to flourish and gain public accommodation or support — sometimes for decades — before crawling back under the social rocks from whence they came.

It’s tempting to believe that if only such domestic terrorists were silenced by government, their views would dissipate; that “out of sight” truly would mean “out of mind.” But such censoring, suppressing and silencing is a betrayal of our core principles — along with being ineffective and often counterproductive. If it ever was possible, never mind desirable, to counter such anti-American sentiments by silencing its proponents, it is now a lost cause in the Age of the Internet and social media. A few provocative tweets or a viral video can reach a global audience that dwarfs anything possible in earlier human history.

But, the desire “to do something” when we witness demonstrations of hate and regressive ideologies can tempt us to take actions that ultimately erode our freedoms.

More than a decade ago, when the hatemongering Westboro Baptist Church group began appearing at the funerals of U.S. military personnel who died in combat, the tiny assembly gained far more visibility than it could have purchased otherwise through its well-publicized fights with municipal authorities seeking to shut down or shunt to remote locations its offensive messages about gays and others.

Defenders of free expression sometimes are the target of those who espouse what the late First Amendment advocate Nat Hentoff described as “Free Speech for Me, but not for Thee.” The ACLU of Virginia is being vehemently attacked online for representing in court the white supremacist group that successfully challenged the Charlottesville government’s initial decision to ban the group from gathering in a centrally-located city park, in favor of a more isolated park about a mile away. What other stand should the ACLU, which has been protecting the free speech rights of opposing groups for nearly a century, have taken?

The First Amendment protects us all from government actions based solely on our views or the content of our expression. There is no national authority on what’s right or acceptable — no “national nanny” to rap knuckles over offensive, disgusting or repugnant views. U.S. District Judge Glen Conrad, in rejecting the government ban on the alt-right rally in Charlottesville, was not validating the views of those who gathered. Rather, Conrad was upholding the nation’s commitment to free speech, and the view of the nation’s founders that their descendants would, over time and when left to freely discuss and consider all options, arrive at the best solution for the greatest number of people.

Hate speech, racial prejudice and policies rooted in white supremacy beliefs were accepted in much of the nation for decades, until confronted by a modern civil rights movement that finally touched a nation’s conscience — and altered its law books — by using all five of the First Amendment freedoms. And the right of free expression stood strong to counter public officials of that era who also cited “public safety” as justification to oppose or arrest those calling for racial justice.

We don’t want to hand our government, at any level, the authority to restrain free expression on the mere supposition that it may provoke violence — or worse, because many or even most in a locale oppose it. Over time, we have developed and been well-served by legal doctrines narrowly defining when officials can act to suppress speeches, rallies or marches; doctrines rooted in specific evidence of real, immediate threats to public safety. From schools to sidewalks, those laws focus applying restrictions on conduct rather than suppressing the ideas behind those actions.

Let’s concede that this system is not neat and tidy, nor effective in all cases. It requires both great effort and great restraint on the part of police and elected officials charged with public safety.

We are debating the limits of free expression in other areas of life today. On college campuses, some argue that their right to be “free from” exposure to some views is greater than the freedom for others to express those views. There is also much debate over the extent to which social media platforms and the internet should now be considered “public spaces” rather than private property, and thus subject to the First Amendment. And the speed and rapidity of the web challenges a legal structure built around communications that moved much more slowly, and less pervasively.

In the wake of the tragedy in Charlottesville, we must remain committed to our core belief that we’re better off — and ultimately, more secure — when we may freely discuss, debate and decide.

For those who repudiate hate groups and the ugly messages they work to spread, let’s keep in mind another adage of the First Amendment community: “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

Gene Policinski is chief operating officer of the Newseum Institute. He can be reached at [email protected], or follow him on Twitter at @genefac.

Right now, Kansans who live anywhere near Wakeeney can only shake heads and wring hands. As they survey profound destruction wreaked upon homes and farms by gust-driven ice missiles the size of baseballs, they reveal the tenacity of prairie residents. They don’t lament, “Woe is me.” Instead, they count their blessings.

More than one battered resident has remarked that they lost property, but no one died. Even in instances where people lost livestock or pets, they express gratitude that family members are well. I can relate. I was relieved to hear my own mom’s voice telling me she was okay after that monster storm battered her house and yard.

Via radar, I watched that white mass layered in purples, pinks, and reds as it cut a swath across Western Kansas. I called Mom to be sure she knew it was coming. She didn’t need me to tell her. Her Nex Tech device alerted her to danger so she was heading for shelter.

Knowing she was protected inside her home comforted me. At Brownie Scout camp decades before, we faced an evacuation through golf-ball size hail. I recalled welts and bruises ice balls rising on young campers and couldn’t imagine facing even larger wind-driven projectiles. After I saw storm-damaged vehicles, windows, and roofs, it was clear anything alive and outside suffered trauma during that assault.

A friend posted the storm in real time on Facebook so I imagined everyone experiencing that icy barrage felt like they were entombed in a continuously battered barrel. It had to be the closest to war that citizens who’d never served in the military experienced. Mom confirmed this when I contacted her following the storm.

Afterwards, the real ordeal began. As people inventoried damages, they found shattered windows, punctured roofs, damaged siding and fences, destroyed lawn furniture, naked trees, and vehicles pocked with more dents than a golf ball has. Some even discovered that the knife-like wind flipped trailer s, trucks, and grain bins topsy-turvy. It stripped fields of ripening grain to toothpick-like stalks.

While those viewing devastating photos bemoaned their friends and loved ones’ fates, I saw so many grateful responses. Caveats such as “Others had it much worse,” or “It can all be cleaned up,” echoed through social media.

A friend with his own troubles helped Mom patch her broken windows. A cousin with carpentry experience drove over two hours the next morning to seal a roof so punctured it could function as a colander. He found a reliable repair company to restore her property. His guidance is a blessing because he has insights the rest of us don’t.

My friend on the farm who noted that others had things much worse than she did brightened lives when she posted a story about her Great Pyrenees pup that found a storm-battered dove and carried it to her. She protected it and watched to see if it would mend enough to fly away. Distant and close friends smiled when she reported it flew off despite significant feather loss.

Right now, it’s hard to think about normal for folks living in this battered region. But like that dove, life will take off.

Native Kansan Karen Madorin is a local writer and retired teacher who loves sharing stories about places, people, critters, plants, food, and history of the High Plains.

We’re into months of candidates and near-candidates and possible candidates shuffling around ahead of the June 1, 2018, filing deadline, formally naming campaign treasurers and starting campaigns.

It’s going to be an unusually busy fall this year as the statewide officeholders decide whether to keep their jobs or seek higher offices, plus 125 Kansas House seats (and so far, just one Senate seat, that of May 1 sworn-in Sen. Richard Hilderbrand, R-Pittsburg) are up for grabs in the 2018 elections.

With all that political gamesmanship under way, there is a key date in the new calendars that will likely have a dramatic effect on those campaigns, and whether some Kansans decide to spend the summer mowing instead of campaigning: Friday, April 20, 2018.

No, it’s not the national marijuana day—that 4:20 celebration—it’s also the date when the state’s best economic experts, the Consensus Revenue Estimating Group, predict whether the state will have enough revenue on hand to finish out what will be the remaining two-plus months of this fiscal year and enough money to pay for expenditures budgeted for the coming fiscal year which starts July 1, 2018.

Not exactly what most Kansans consider the date that the earth either shakes or doesn’t. But to a surprisingly large degree, it is an earth-mover.

Enough money? Everything is good.

Not enough money? Then there must be, just before the primary election, cuts in spending on things that most Kansans want money spent on. Like social services, roads, law enforcement and corrections…you name it, someone out there wants it done with his or her tax money.

Or…there could be just-before the Legislature adjourns increases in taxes. That’s not anything an incumbent wants to campaign about or read on his/her opponent’s campaign cards, is it?

And that final estimate of revenues will be made just three days after what is likely to be the biggest influx of state income taxes in years. Key, remember, is that the massive income tax increases voted by this spring’s Legislature became effective retroactively to Jan. 1, 2017, and Kansans have been essentially given until April 17, 2018, to pay those taxes without penalty.

That extra time before penalties kick in means that if you don’t have adequate paycheck withholding you must come up with a big check for the state by April 17. Plus, folks who have LLCs or other businesses that for the past four years have been exempted from state income tax on “non-wage income” will be writing checks to the state on that date also. These last-minute payments essentially shake the state’s ability to monitor monthly how revenues are coming in.

Practically, if you have to pay taxes above your withholding, or try to remember just where you pay those income taxes if you’re coming off a four-year tax holiday, you aren’t going to be paying this year’s retroactive taxes early.

It’s that time-value of money deal. If you can earn another month or two of interest on your non-wage income, you’ll do it. That’s just marginally smart business. You pay your bills on the deadline, not early.

So those April receipts? Three days after the no-penalty payment deadline, they get ground into that Consensus Revenue Estimate that essentially decides what the governor and Legislature do to balance the budget. And, of course, whether voters are going to be inconvenienced and probably recall just who inconvenienced them when they see the name on the ballot.

Right now, before we know how this year’s tax increases work out, there are a lot of issues for candidates to talk about.

Those issues might change on April 20, 2018.

Syndicated by Hawver News Company LLC of Topeka; Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report—to learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit the website at www.hawvernews.com

Seems some people outside of agriculture routinely try to define the family farm. These same folks tend to question corporate farming whether family owned or not.

Let’s look at a Kansas family farm. In our state, many are based on owner operation. This means the rights and responsibilities of ownership are vested in an entrepreneur who lives and works the farm for a living.

The second key to defining the family farming system would include independence. Independence implies financing from within its own resources using family labor, management and intellect to build equity and cash flow that will retire the mortgage, preferably in the lifetime of the owner.

Economic dispersion is the next important step in defining what a family farm should entail. Economic dispersion would include large numbers of efficient-sized farms operating with equal access to competitive markets worldwide.

No family farm would be complete without a family core. This family-centered operation must have a family who lives in harmony within the workplace. All family members share responsibilities and the children learn the vocation of their parents.

The ideal family farm would be commercially diversified. Production of diversified commodities would help reduce price risks and maximize the use of farm resources. In turn, this would provide greater self-sufficiency to produce crops and livestock.

One final attribute necessary in defining today’s family farm would be the acceptance and use of innovative technology. This not only enhances farm labor, but also helps boost production.

Family farming carries with it a commitment to specific, independent values. These values become a part of the community and include conservation, frugality, responsibility, honesty, dignity in work, neighborliness, self-reliance and concern and care for future generations.

While it’s rare indeed that one family farm may possess all of these attributes, together they have created a system of agriculture that has been a part of our rural culture since our state’s beginning.

Today, detractors of this profession are making it increasingly difficult for this vital industry to progress and prosper. That’s why it’s more important than ever to share information about our skills and attributes with those unfamiliar with our calling.

John Schlageck, a Hoxie native, is a leading commentator on agriculture and rural Kansas.

By JOHN P. TRETBAR

Kansas independent oil producers got an earful from members of the state’s congressional delegation Monday, mostly about regulation and tax reform. Senator Pat Roberts, and Representatives Lynn Jenkins, Kevin Yoder and Ron Estes took part in the annual meeting of the Kansas Independent Oil & Gas Association in Wichita. Yoder told the gathering that tax reform would be the “centerpiece” of the House’s work this fall. Jenkins complained about the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for ending filibusters, calling it “the only thing” keeping them from doing the right thing in Washington. Senator Roberts said he hopes they won’t have to do away with the rule, saying he thinks it would be bad for the country, making the Senate little more than the House.

Baker Hughes reported 949 active drilling rigs across the US Friday, a drop of eight rigs drilling for natural gas but an increase of three rigs looking for oil. Canada reported 220 active rigs, up three. They’re drilling at one site in Russell County and reporting drilling ahead on two leases in Barton County this week. Operators are moving in completion tools at two sites in Barton County, two sites in Ellis County, and one in Stafford County. Independent Oil & Gas reports 11 active rigs in eastern Kansas last week, up three, and 23 west of Wichita up one.

The Nomenclature Committee of the Kansas Geological Society recognized and named 16 new oil fields in Kansas last month, bringing the statewide total so far this year to 38, 22 more than the same period last year. The committee recognized two new fields in Ellis County, Coachman Energy’s Penney lease, and Stroke of Luck Energy’s Custer Valley play.

Operators filed 40 permits to drill at new locations last week, 22 east of Wichita and 18 in western Kansas, including two each in Ellis and Stafford counties. Statewide so far this year we’ve seen 859 new permits, compared to 598 a year ago and 1,535 at this time two years ago.

Independent Oil & Gas Service reported 27 new well completions across the state last week, 820 so far this year, including ten in eastern Kansas and 17 west of Wichita. There was one in Ellis County and two in Russell County but all three were dry holes.

Monthly numbers from Independent Oil & Gas Service show that through July, one in four completed wells statewide, and one in three in western Kansas failed to produce pay dirt. Operators reported 27 dry holes in July out of 80 completed wells. So far this year, out of 741 total completions, 180 were dry holes. Independent reported 54 newly-completed wells in eastern Kansas last month and 26 west of Wichita, including three in Barton County, one in Russell County and one in Stafford County.

Operators filed 93 permits to drill at new locations across Kansas last month. There were 41 new permits in eastern Kansas and 52 in western Kansas, including two in Barton County, two in Ellis County, and one in Russell County.

The US was a net-exporter of Liquefied Natural Gas for the first time in 60 years. Last week the government reported our capacity to export LNG is set to increase nearly sevenfold over the next three years thanks to five new export projects, as well as rising capacity on pipelines to Mexico. In its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook the US Energy Information Administration raised its estimate of US crude oil output for this year and next year. EIA lowered its price expectations for this year, but left next year’s price forecast unchanged.

A rail bridge and rail line viewed as critical to the oil and gas industry in Texas will get a refit, thanks to a $7 million grant from the federal government. The funds will be used to rebuild the Presidio-Ojinaga International Rail Bridge across the Rio Grande, which was damaged and closed by fire nine years ago. Officials called the project a critical project to increase jobs and investment in the Permian Basin and the Texas oil patch.

Chinese crude oil imports in July dropped to their lowest level in seven months, although they were up 12 percent on an annual basis. According to Reuters both exports and imports increased less than expected and that has analysts worried that China’s economy may have started to show signs of a slowdown.

The list of people facing sanctions in Venezuela grew to 30 this week, But an outcry from the US oil industry appears to have stalled efforts to sanction the country as a whole. Officials say a ban on petroleum imports from Venezuela, our third-largest supplier, would cost U.S. jobs and drive up gasoline costs. The Trump administration on Wednesday slapped sanctions on eight members of Venezuela’s new constitutional assembly. The Treasury Department took the unusual step of sanctioning Maduro himself last month, freezing any assets he may have in the U.S. and blocking Americans from doing business with him.